The Building:

Begun as a three-aisle hall church at about the same time as the town was founded, the oldest pre-Romanesque parts of the building are located in the western outer wall of the building. Pilister corner strips, a rounded frieze and lanset windows are amongst other remanents of this first church.
In the 14th century, the church was enlarged by the addition of two bays, and decorated by the addition of peaked arch portals in the north of south of these. After a 1455 fire, the building was rebuilt with a pentagonal choir bay and a massive ornamental helm on the top of the spire. The Great fire of 1759 destroyed this ornamental helm, as well as the building's vaulting and medieval interior. Under instruction of the court masterbuilder Johann Jachim Busch of Ludwigsluster, the tower's roof and its interior was rebuilt in a Gothic style.
The centre aisle of the church was distinguished from this time on by a semi-circular barrel-shaped timber supports, the side-aisles by a flat wooden roof. Busch envisaged a pulpit alter, and after the pulpit was relocated into the church nave, the alter was completed with the addition of the Ludwigluster court painter J.H. Surlandt; the image is a copy of Annibale Carraci's "The Burial of Christ". The church's northern and southern side-chapels were never restored due to insufficient funds, with the foundations also removed. Between 1841 and 1843, Georg Adolph Demmler oversaw the addition of a latern to the of a Baroque-style tower crown, heighening the tower, which still offers a sightseeing platform to visitors. In the 1970s, the church was threatened by structural damage, losing once more much of its interior: the 1883 organ, built by Friese of Schwerin, was removed. After 1980, the church was renovated, the interior again altered and a winter church on the site added. In 1994, a new organ was purchased from the organmakers Jähmlich of Dresden and installed in the church. The church recovered its complete set of bells in 2004, with the addition of four bells made from bronze. The tower (at 45 metre high) offers a wonderful view of the town's surrounds – though visitors have to first climb 214 stairs in order to get there! Opening hours for the tower are the same as those for the church.

Das Bauwerk:
The town of Ribnitz was founded by Westphalian traders making their way along the medieval trade routes on the Baltic coast. The town grew substantially due to its proximity to the duchy's fortress at the start of the 14th century and was granted a town charter by nearby Lübeck in 1257. 
The Rostock Gate is the last remaining gate of the town fortifications remaining. Unlike other town fortifications its historical region (the Brandenburg Neumark), it lacks the typical regional architectural feature of platforms embellished with battlements sealing off the respective buildings comprising the fortification – yet the ornamental components of the building and rounded arcades are typical of the regional style.
The Gothic Gate was built in the first half of the 15th century and came to represent the town's prosperity in its region. It replaced an earlier gate, mentioned in sources dating to 1290.
Today iron staves on the town side of the tower's passsage mark the standard guages of the medieval town; at street level, an ancient window beckons to the gate passage. On Palm Sunday 1329, the first four nuns of the Clarissa nunnery entered the town from Weißenfels in Westphalia. 
In times of unrest, the deployment of a permanent watch comprised many guards, including several watchmen, a gate captain, archers and riflemen (resonsible for the management of the weapon's hold and gunpowder mill along with the oversight of the watch), in addition to a watchman and several serfs.
Ribnitz was divided into five or six defence zones, with the gates representing the chief defence points. In 1546, Duke Heinrich V.'s personal powder supply was held in the gate by the gate's chief rifleman, Heinrich Nordemann.
In 1878, citizens' representatives successfully resisted a call to demolish the Rostock Gate; however, ever-increasing traffic resulted in the removal of the watchman's house, and to the installation of a two pronged bridge. The gate again faced demolition in the 1960s, only narrowly escaping destruction. The gate passage was partially widened during this epoch, only to be reversed in 1981.
 

The Building:

St. Bartholomew's is comprised of five parts, including an altar space nave, tower, sacristy and southern portal. The altar space was built before 1260 as a rectangular Brick Gothic church with a vault later destroyed in the 30 Years' War. From the 17th century on, the church has had a flat wooden ceiling. The wall niches on the southern edge were excavated thanks to renovation work in 2002, and have been restored to their original 1280 form.
The nave was built in a Late Brick Gothic style, with a wooden, barrel shaped roof added in the 15th century. The roof murals were added very late, in 1890. Today's spire was dedicated in 1887, replacing a 1723 timber-framed spire removed in 1884.
It's thought the sacristy was built in th 14th century, containing a circular, ledged vault. The southern portal was built in 1890 at the same time as the modern spire was added.  
In the church, the oldest components of the building are enriched by the modern additions: the church's bells date back to 1457 and 1601; the cruxifix from the 15th century; the altar and cancel are Baroque, a shield-shaped epitaph dates to 1680.
The baptism font was built in the Berlin workshoop of M. Geiss in the 19th cnetury. The 
Sauer-Organ is just decades old, having been completed in 1971. Three windows bearing motifs exploring themes of love, belief and hope were added by artist Thomas Kuzio in 2002 and the newest component of the church's interior dates to 2003, with a St. Bartholemew themed relief made from wood and bronze by Cologne sculptor Cantal Vogt.

The Building:
The Clarissa order nunnery in Ribnitz was one of the last nunnerys or monasteries to be founded in the dutchy of Mecklenburg. In 1323, Duke Heinrich II. von Mecklenburg (1287/ 1302-1329) bequeathed to the Franciscans his court stronghold in the southeast of the town of Ribnitz.  The first four nuns arrived from the Clarissa nunnery in the Westphalian town of Weißenfels. (Later on, the inhabitants of  the nunnery were predominantly women from the Pomerenian and Mecklenburger aristocracy in addition to noblewomen from Lübeck). The Mecklenburger Duchy's ruling family provided the majority of convent residents, which was closely connected with the interests of the landly aristocracy. In 1330, the nunnery is concecrated, while today's church facility was begun in 1361, and was concecrated in 1393.
The church is a broad, vaulted Brick Gothic hall composed of six narrow right angled bays supported by inwards-facing support pillars lacking a fixed ambulatory. The church is flanked at its east and west gables by a small tower. In the east of the nave, a wooden gallery for the nuns remains today, having preserved much of its original form, most notably nuns' stalls installed ca. 1400.
The nunnery church is the last remaining building of the late medieval nunnery site still remaining largely intact in tis original form. Its interior was rebuilt in 1840 in a neo-Gothic style.
The Reformation saw the transformation of the Nunnery into an aristocratic convent, one of three Evangelical "Mecklenburger Rural Monasteries." In 1599, the site was gifted to the Estates of Mecklenburg, the nunnery at that time offering income and accommodation to 12 unmarried daughters of the Mecklenburg Duke. After 1705, statutes stipulated that two daughters of the Rostock Guild also had to be housed in the convent. 
The transfer of the contents of the convent to the Duke and the devestating consequences of the 30 Years' War led to the collapse of the convent: after 1720, the workhouses found onsite were modernised; thus, a house was provided to the forewoman of the nunnery (known as a "Domina"), with the rest of the residents housed in new apartments built at this time.
The old refactory was also replaced with modern accommodation during this time. However, the spatial plan of the medieval nunnery courtyard was largely preseved. The last apartments for the women living in the convent were installed in the 19th century; in 1891-92 a new administration centre for the nunnery was added.
In 2006, restoration work on the former forewoman's house was completed: today, the Ribnitz-Damgarten German Museum of Amber is housed in this and adjoining buildings. During restoration work, workers were suprised to discover remains of the north wall of the dormitory, which have now been excavated and can be seen by visitors. The convent houses are today in demand apartments; the presence of the Museum, the town library, the Nunnery Gallery and the town archive have converted the nunnery site into a cultural centre of the town. 
The nunnery church has housed an exhibition about the nunnery and town history ever since the restoration work was completed. The nunnery's owner is now the town; the nunnery's church and its associated exhibitions are managed by the "Association of the Ribnitz-Darmgarten German Museum of Amber" ("Museumsverein Deutsches Bernsteinmuseum Ribnitz-Damgarten.") The Ribnitz Nunnery and the local historical collection form part of the German Museum of Amber.
The nunnery still houses a number of outstanding wooden icons, the so-called "Ribnitz Madonnas". The figures were originally part of the nunnery church's altars, and were made over several centuries, from the start of the 14th century through to the first half of the 16th. They are of outstanding quality, having largely preserved their authentic original colour scheme. Uniquely massive tablets originally used for catchesism and the traces left by nuns are amongst the exciting objects on display for visitors to the museum; the latter, described affectionally as "nun's dust," is comprised by objects and artefacts left either unintentionally or intentionally over the centuries by the nuns at prayer, and later discovered by workers restoring the storeroom of the church several years ago. The artefacts include songbooks, histories of the nunnery, doodlepads, glasses, paper fragments and much more, providing visitors with an exciting glimpse at the site's past. The sedan, designed for use by the convent's residents in the 18th century, is the last such in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Ribnitz Nunnery is to be developed into a research centre investigating the history of Evangelical monastic culture in northern Germany.